TWO

Cedar Grove Apartments
Pierre, South Dakota
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
10:19 AM

If there was one thing Sam Winchester didn't want to think about, it was the last time he had seen his father. Dad had been lying there lifeless on the floor, his broken arm collapsed against his chest as it remained still, his entire body nothing more than a shell of the former indestructible man it had once been. In the middle of the night, Sam often heard himself scream for help from the doctors, sometimes felt the brush of their white coats against his skin as they pushed him away and hauled his father onto the bed right beside him, and occasionally dreamt that they were able to revive the man who had dropped dead without any warning or without any rhyme or reason behind it.

There was a hole that had been left behind by Dad's passing, one that was shared between both Sam and Dean. As the minutes ticked by and the days turned into weeks, the void that had been struck the second the doctors had called time of death became a chasm that was ever-widening. Sam, in his own way, attempted to deal with the loss by turning his interests elsewhere, focusing on finding The Demon and The Colt that eluded them and had gone missing the day John Winchester had died—the coincidence of the two not lost on Sam, his notice of it piquing the longer he scoured the web for information. While Dean worked on the car, Sam glued himself to every book around the house or the one computer stationed upstairs, every search he conducted leading him nowhere in terms of tracking down the things the brothers needed in order to get on with their lives, both objects going hand-in-hand when it came to finally putting the mission that had been pressed upon them since they were children to rest.

But there was something more that Sam needed from the demon that had escaped them, something that Dean would never understand nor know. Sam needed answers. The night before the accident, the demon had admitted something that had rocked Sam in a way that he would never be able to shake until It was dead: "My plans for you, Sammy. You… and all the other children like you." In all the time that he spent alone inside of Bobby's house, perched upstairs at the desk or in the drawing room on the couch, Sam had been unable to place a meaning to the words that haunted him as much as his last memory of his father. While Sam knew that he wasn't alone in being Chosen—as he had once put it upon meeting someone else cursed with a sudden gift, an ability that had started around the time he had turned twenty-two—it bothered him to know that The Demon was up to something more than the usual hellish hijinks. For the most part, demons had no master plan or ulterior motive. All they cared about was random chaos and hysteria. Why this one, out of all the others, had some kind of scheme that went beyond plane crashes and haphazard possessions, Sam didn't know, but he was itching to find out in a way that he could never convey to his brother, Dean not likely to comprehend his hunger for an explanation as to what his future held.

Sitting back in the front seat of the red-and-white 1968 Ford Ranger Dean had stolen from the parking lot of the Cooper Carnival, the location of their last job that had left them stranded without transportation, Sam stared out the window as the rural highway they were taking into Pierre, South Dakota passed underneath the truck's bouncy, shock-less tires. For the past three hours, Sam had been doing nothing but taking in the scenery that whipped around them in a blur of brown and gray, their drab surroundings matching the mood that Sam seemed permanently affixed to, one that was somewhere between depression and frustration. Every now and again, as the mile markers became nothing but a forgotten memory in the rearview mirrors and signs disappeared into dirt-paved driveways, Sam could hear his brother grumble, the spring of their vehicle's cab becoming heavier the more uneven the road became. Occasionally, Sam could pick up his brother's aggravated mutterings, his main topic being the fact that they should have held onto Dad's truck for moments like this, Sam understanding that Dean was irritated with his brother for forfeiting it in an attempt to shoo away the girl that shouldn't have been there in the first place.

The past year for Sam and Dean Winchester had been nothing short of a bumpy roller coaster that seemed to have fallen off the rails sometime before the ride had begun. Back in the previous October, when things had been simpler and easier, Sam's life of school and normalcy had been interrupted by an appearance from his older brother on Halloween, Sam and Dean not seeing each other for a long time before that, their relationship divided the night Sam had decided to leave hunting behind for college. For two years prior to Dean's abrupt arrival, Sam had been attending Stanford University, going to classes and earning good grades, and had eventually managed to get himself a girlfriend and a nice apartment close to campus—the place beating out all the dives the Winchesters seemed to frequent, thought the monthly payments hurt his wallet enough to make him long for the sleazy motels that had filled in as a home. In all the time that Sam had been gone, he had been blissful, his life away from demons and darkness calming him as he settled into something average and accountable.

When Dean had arrived, Sam had known something was wrong, his brother having left Sam alone ever since he had ditched the family business for school. Unfortunately, Dean's appearance had meant more for Sam than he was sure his brother had intended. After listening to Dean attempt to coax him away from his cozy apartment and back into the depths of hunting, Sam had agreed on the grounds that he would be allowed to return to the life he wanted so badly afterward, something itching at the back of his mind that was more than being caught off-guard by his brother suddenly standing before him. Though he tried to take his time inside, his girlfriend, Jessica, worried and talking to him while he got ready to go, Sam had had a feeling that leaving would be a mistake, a heaviness in his chest making his movements slow as he attempted to brush off the thoughts echoing inside his head.

As soon as Sam and Dean were once again back on the road together, the ease of hunting as a team returned to them as though it had never left. As the two worked on what had pushed them into pairing up again—the case at hand, a Woman in White haunting a stretch of road in Jericho, California, and the fact that Dad had up and disappeared in the middle of a job without much of a warning to either of his sons—Sam fought hard against himself as he recognized the quickness in which he resumed the lifestyle he wanted nothing to do with, his two years away from it meaning nothing and seeming erased as he worked as though he had been at it the entire time he had retired. Before long, the ghost was in the ground and the brothers were returning to Stanford, their search for Dad ending in nothing but the discovery of his journal and his motel room.

However, as soon as Dean had pulled his beloved black, 1967 Chevrolet Impala up to the curb outside of Sam's off-campus apartment, the heaviness in his chest began to thud, a dark cloud hovering over him as he stepped out of the vehicle and onto the sidewalk, Dean calling out to him but Sam barely responding as his mind went elsewhere. It hadn't taken long before his worst nightmare had been realized, his trip away from home costing him everything he had within seconds of walking through the door. Before he had left, he had seen things while he had been asleep, sadistic things that he had thought to be only his imagination, things that became real the moment he had lied down on the bed.

The fire had been quick and swift, swallowing the apartment whole, with Sam only making it out alive thanks to his older brother. The cops had wanted to know how it started, the detectives had wanted to know what he had seen, and the insurance companies wanted to know who to make the check out to, but all of those things had been forgotten in Sam's grief and in Dean's persistence that they leave town to put it behind them and to follow Dad on the trail he was leading them down.

At first, in the beginning stages of rejoining Dean on the road, Sam had been angry, not at his brother, but at himself. He had become so engulfed in depression and frustration that he hadn't slept, his aggravation coursing through him even when he was unconscious and causing him to relieve the moment Jessica had called down to him from the ceiling in which she had been pinned, her stomach bleeding and dripping onto his head, before the flames had licked the walls and exploded behind her. Initially, Dean had kept his mouth shut as Sam stayed awake, watching George Foreman infomercials until four in the morning before heading out for a coffee run, but hadn't remained quiet for long. Though his brother kept persisting for Sam to deal with his angst in a way that kept him both in the game and awake enough to keep from getting killed on hunts, Sam had a reason for gluing his mouth shut, the sense that his dreams were more than dreams bothering him well until he discovered he was right.

In all the time that the brothers were on the road, chasing after Dad and taking random jobs in order to pass the days that weren't spent waiting around in a motel room for clues as to their father's whereabouts, Sam had started to feel as though there was something wrong with him, a tiny voice in his ear telling him that he had known that Jessica was going to die the way she had for nearly a week beforehand. As the months progressed, Sam had taken to trying to understand what was happening to him, a particularly odd case back in Lawrence of a poltergeist taking possession of their old house proving to Sam that something inside of him was changing. Though that hadn't been the only instance that had scared Sam into knowing he was different, it had been the first, the moment that had sent him on the path to officially worrying that something about him was wrong.

It hadn't been until the encounter with Max Miller that Sam had started to understand what was happening—started to, but never fully grasped it, especially not now after The Demon's haunting words. The kid had been able to move things with his mind, his mother dying in a nursery fire just like Sam and Dean's mother had when Sam was six months old, and had been killing members of his family with his newfound ability. While he had been there, Sam had experienced visions that were unlike anything he had ever seen, the vividness and sharpness of them scaring Sam into thinking his startling aptitude was advancing. Though Max hadn't lived long enough for Sam to find out more, to see if he knew anything that would give reason to what was going on with both of them, it had scared Sam into burying his curiosity, the idea that their sudden gifts were dangerous keeping him from digging further into the deep.

Months had passed before anything else had happened, causing Sam to somewhat forget his abnormality in lieu of finding Dad and hunting down The Demon. As the brothers worked together on killing anything from spirits to rawheads to pagan gods, hunting began to swallow Sam whole, his tiny hope of returning to a normal life becoming extinguished the night the brothers finally reconnected with their father in Colorado, a nest of vampires stirring up trouble and forcing John Winchester to work with his sons on a case. From there, the three had teamed up, ignoring their differences and unspoken arguments in an attempt to get the vamps in the ground and their lives back on track. By the time they had finished the job, Sam and Dean had convinced Dad to let them help in trying to track down The Demon, both brothers making the argument that they were in this together, that this wasn't just Dad's hunt. Unfortunately, their effort to search out the thing that had disrupted their family so badly had been the last thing the three would ever do together again, The Demon showing up to try to stop them before they could put a bullet through its head.

In all the time that he had been gone, searching out The Demon and working alone, Dad had been looking for something else, something equally as important to the cause: a gun crafted in 1835 by forger Samuel Colt, one that had been especially made to kill anything, demons included. By the time Dad had finally gotten his hands on it, only five bullets remained of the original thirteen set, almost all of them except for one being expended not long after it had been acquired. The first one had been used on the leader of the vampire nest the Winchesters had infiltrated, whereas three more had been used against The Demon and his horde when the brothers and their father had been given no choice during a fight that would have gone from bad to worse had the weapon not been fired—The Demon possessing Dad and not letting go until Sam had squeezed off a shot that scared it away. Unfortunately, the last time the gun had been seen had been moments before their father died, The Colt eluding them as promptly as The Demon had, the ties between all three incidents becoming a conundrum that Sam was intent on solving.

Before he had passed, during the couple of days the Winchesters had spent in the hospital, Dad had been obsessed with getting his hands on the gun, the fact that the car wreck they had been in, the one that had sent them to the South Dakota State Hospital and had put Dean in a coma, becoming a lost issue as Dad focused solely on obtaining the weapon from the trunk of the smashed Impala. As Sam worked tirelessly on finding a way to yank Dean away from Death's Door, Dad seemed to have an ulterior motive, sending Sam to Bobby's in order to gather ingredients to summon the demon in some kind of act of revenge. Though Sam had followed his father's commands, not seeing any way out of not giving him what he asked for, he had known that something was wrong, the way Dad disappeared at the height of the dilemma with Dean proving as much.

However, the fact that Dad had appeared right when Dean had miraculously recovered, then died a minute later with The Colt missing and The Demon gone, pointed to foul play, though just on whose side the blame lied remained a mystery. As soon as their father was pronounced dead, the brothers had been distraught and homeless, their car wrecked and their family disbursed, the two of them what was left of the Winchester line. Heading to the only place they knew they could go, Sam and Dean had gone straight to Bobby's, the man welcoming them in and watching over them like a hawk that wouldn't let them out of his sight. While Dean worked on the car and Sam read, Bobby tried to make them comfortable, asking if they needed anything every now and again to make sure they were as close to alright as they could get.

Unfortunately, Sam, who had been milling over what had occurred for twenty-four hours without rest right after it had happened, had been unable to put his mind at ease as he attempted to sort through what had gone down, the fact that Dad's death didn't click in his mind, the doctor's diagnosis of a cardiac arrest not making sense to him, keeping him awake. In a fit of frustration, Sam had taken his issues up with Bobby, wondering if his friend could shed light on the subject, but only getting turned down as the older man remained tight-lipped. Though Sam had a feeling Bobby Singer knew more than he was letting on, he also had a feeling there was no way he was going to be able to coax it out of him. Resigning to sorting it out on his own, and knowing that keeping at it would cause Bobby to stay away until the younger Winchester got the hint, Sam had taken up his post at the upstairs computer, only moving every now and again whenever he got tired of reading useless websites and became set on searching for something more concrete.

Ultimately, though, there had been more than one Winchester-related issue that needed to be resolved, something that probably never would be, given both brother's attitudes toward the matter. During the summer, between a couple of cases in Maine and the South, Sam and Dean had met someone that rattled their cages just as badly as Sam's premonition revelation. There had been a girl that had been watching them, her green-eyed stare and connection to Dad blatant once the brothers started looking for it. They had cornered her out in the lot of a diner in Brewer, the girl stumbling over her words but admitting enough to send both Sam and Dean into a rage that was unconquerable. As soon as she had called John Winchester "Dad", that had been it, the brothers wanting to call her a liar but only getting their worst suspicions confirmed by their own father.

Though neither Sam nor Dean had seen her more than once following the encounter in Maine, Sam sometimes caught himself wondering about her, his interest quickly turning to irritation the moment he realized his father had lied to him for twenty-something years. The day after Dad's death, Sam had remembered the girl from the diner, his fingers wrapping around her necklace in his pocket before giving Bobby the task of relaying the bad news about what had happened to John. For some reason, something he couldn't explain, Sam had kept the shining silver crucifix he had found in Dad's abandoned motel room in Bayview, the fact that it served as a constant reminder of his father's betrayal possibly being the leading cause. However, Sam felt it was more than that, as though it grounded him somehow, gave him a perspective on everything that bothered him the moment he touched it. Though Dean didn't know that Sam had the thing in his pocket, and would most likely be furious as the idea of his brother holding onto something that belonged to That Girl, as Dean called her, he couldn't bear to part with it, something in his gut telling him it was important.

Unfortunately, the last time they had met, Sam had been too caught up in the moment to return it. The surprise of her visit to Bobby's, toting Dad's discarded truck in tow, had placed it in the back of his mind, further still when Dean came out to tell her to leave with the same amount of tact he used on the creatures they hunted and killed. While she had been there, Sam had noticed something about her that disturbed him, something that felt different, a vibe resonating off of her that seemed dangerous and severe. Suddenly wanting to get rid of her just as badly as his brother had, Sam had passed off Dad's truck to her without a second glance, the argument with Dean that followed becoming short-lived the moment she had driven off in the old GMC, Sam conceding that he agreed with his older brother not long after. Smug in that disclosure, Dean had given him a tight-lipped smile before returning to his work on the Impala, all discussion of her forgotten between them despite the fact that Sam retained the crucifix, never taking it out for anyone to see except to show Bobby that he had it.

In truth, Sam didn't know whether or not he ever wanted to know her, Dean's obvious hatred of her giving him pause whenever he gave her any sort of thought. To them, she was just a stranger, and Sam had a feeling it would be better for all of them if she remained that way. Though Sam knew nothing about her aside from where she lived and where she went to school, the Internet providing as much, he wasn't sure if he wanted to know. If she was a Hunter, it would be better if they stayed away from each other; if she wasn't, better still. Sam and Dean lived dangerous lives. They couldn't afford to keep contact with anyone who wasn't already in the game, or even someone who was, but that didn't stop Sam from being curious.

Snapping out of his train of thought as Dean slowed the Ford to a stop outside of an apartment complex, Sam bunched his jaw as he took in the filthiness of the exterior of the Cedar Grove Apartments, the sign welcoming them in covered with dirt and graffiti that looked as though an unpracticed teenager had done it. Before they had left, Sam had looked up the victim's, Bryan Jackson's, home address, telling his brother that it would be a good place to start looking for information, Dean still having a problem accepting cases from someone who wasn't either of them or Dad. Though it seemed as though this job was a little far-fetched, someone's tongue getting ripped out of their mouth inside of a locked apartment with no one hearing or seeing anything, Sam was willing to give it a shot, no matter what Dean did or said.

"Well, this looks cozy," Dean muttered sarcastically as he pulled into an empty spot and shut off the Ranger's whining engine, popping open the door to the driver's side and getting out, his knees cracking from the long drive between Pierre and Sioux Falls. "I feel like I'm going to get a disease just by looking at it."

Ignoring his brother's grumbling, especially given he had heard it for years and knew that it meant nothing, Sam slipped out of the passenger's seat and grabbed the duffle placed in the middle of the bench, the bag having been positioned between the brothers the entire drive into South Dakota's state capital, some of the weapons inside digging into Sam's leg whenever they hit a particularly rough bump. Swinging it over his shoulder and shutting the door, Sam looked over at the grungy building, noticing that each apartment was stacked as a duplex, all lined up in a row of eight, and each holding doors that had been painted a navy blue against the faded yellow of the building—some of them containing dirty numbers and some of them shining with brass.

If Sam had to guess, he would assume that Bryan Jackson's apartment would be no better on the inside as it was on the outside. Unfortunately, trash bags in the bushes, dead plants lining the sidewalk, and junker cars out in the lot aside, the brothers had a job to do and the only way to do it would be to head for Apartment C on the lower level of the complex. Hitching the duffle from where it had slipped down his arm, Sam bit his lip as he looked over at Dean, seeing that his brother was nodding slowly in acceptance, the idea that there was a possible hunt upon them causing Dean to focus in on the task at hand.

"Let's do this, then."

Smirking to himself at his brother's remark, Sam nodded as well, taking the first steps toward Bryan Jackson's apartment and leading the way inside.